Best Practices
Not an expert in social media? That’s ok! But make sure you understand general best practices for social media. This will help you blend into content on the platform. You do not want to stand out on social media because your audience can tell you don’t understand the platform.
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Tailoring Posts to Platform
Different audiences “live” on each social media platform and each platform functions differently. To create content that is engaging to a specific platforms audience you need to make sure it is optimized for the platform.
That starts with strategy. UF/IFAS’ social media team defines what audience they want to reach on each platform, and we think of that audience every time we create a post. For example, if you were writing a post about an agricultural disease, you would write very differently if you were speaking to a grower with 40 years of experience vs a homeowner who is new to Florida.
Once you can picture your audience for each platform, you should familiarize yourself with the feature differences between social media platforms. For example, URLs are not clickable in the caption of Instagram posts, and you can tag accounts in the images of X posts.
You can find more platform specific guidance here THIS IS A PAGE THAT IS BEING BUILT- LINK ONCE LIVE
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Video
It’s difficult to have a successful social media presence without incorporating video. Video can be intimidating, but if you follow these 5 tips you can create engaging social media videos:
- Communicate value immediately – Hook your audience within the first 3-5 seconds or they’re going to keep scrolling.
- Fit in to stand out – your content should look like it belongs on social media.
- Produce video in the correct aspect ratio for the platform/post type.
- Audio is important. Invest in mics if you are planning to produce more videos.
- Make it accessible – make sure you have open captions or upload an SRT file.
- Always keep your audience and goal in mind.
Content should also comply with our branding guidelines. For interview style and other produced video styles, we are developing branded mogrt templates (coming soon) to make it easier for you to create on brand content in Adobe Premiere.
When creating videos on Facebook and Instagram it is acceptable to use the stickers available on platform, even though they are not brand fonts. It is not acceptable to use music from popular artists. According to Meta’s Reels Playbook, “brands cannot use popular music tracks unless licensing is procured by the brand – even in an organic post”.
Here are some great resources for creating social media video:
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Imagery
When creating a cover image or posting to social media, it is essential to follow image dimensions suggested by social media platforms. Hootsuite’s social media image size guide is a great quick reference.
You should also review our brand style guide to ensure your imagery aligns with our brand.
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Navigating the Comment Section
When in doubt, don’t hide comments. Never delete comments.
You can only hide a comment if a comment:
- constitutes a violation of Florida or federal law.
- is irrelevant to the topic at hand and/or clearly spam (A comment about forex trading on a post about dairy cows.)
- contains links to third-party websites or content
For more guidance, please read our social media comment management guidelines. If you have any questions about a specific comment, please reach out to our Social Media Manager.
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Presentations and Training
Social media is always evolving. The UF/IFAS social media team plans to offer regular trainings and office hours to help our community of social media managers. Scheduled trainings will be announced via IFAS All emails.
If you would like to schedule an additional training for yourself, yourself and team members, or a large group within your unit please do this on Workfront. If you would like guidance on how to promote a specific event, program, etc. via social media submit this on Workfront.